A Detailed Guide To Keeping Yourself Healthy Before The Next AFCON Match

It is unfortunate to close your eyes and never wake up while enjoying a sport that gives you so much joy.

Unfortunately, this was the sad story of some men who gave up the ghost while enjoying a sport that was supposed to give them momentary euphoria and take their minds off life’s troubles.

Some days back, Naija News reported that at least four men died while watching the semi-final match between the Super Eagles of Nigeria and Bafana Bafana of South Africa in the 2023 African Cup of Nations (AFCON) in Cote D’Ivoire.

Reports from various witnesses indicated that these men slumped and died while the match was quite intense.

Situations that excite people and send them into a frenzy will always occur and cannot be avoided. So the question remains: how do you stay healthy enough to prevent high blood pressure and manage after receiving a diagnosis?

In this article, Naija News looks in-depth into the risk factors, treatment, causes, and management of high blood pressure.

What Is High Blood Pressure

In 2017, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association published new guidelines for hypertension management and defined high hypertension as blood pressure at or above 130/80 mmHg.

Also, Stage 2 hypertension is defined as a blood pressure at or above 140/90 m mHg. 1

According to the latest WHO data published in 2020, Hypertension Deaths in Nigeria reached 10,692 or 0.72% of total deaths. The age-adjusted Death Rate is 16.07 per 100,000 population, ranks Nigeria #103 globally.

This medical condition is a significant cause of premature death worldwide and should make everyone more conscious of their health and make better lifestyle choices.

What Does The Expert Say

In a bid to get a medical expert opinion on this disease, Naija News reached out to a Doctor of Pharmacy, Ese Oju, practicing in the United Kingdom.

Can you please give us a layman explanation of what hypertension is?

My name is Ese Oju and I am a Nigerian Pharmacist currently based in the UK. Hypertension is also known as high blood pressure and in lay man terms it is when the pressure in the blood vessels is unusually high. And it can be serious if not treated. Approximately 1.28 billion adults aged 30 to 79 years worldwide have hypertension and most of them are living in low and middle income countries. Hypertension is the major cause of premature death worldwide. An estimated 46 percent of adults with hypertension are unaware that they have the condition.

What would you say are the causes of hypertension?

“Hypertension has no known cause, but there are series of risks factors.

“Factors that increase the risk of someone having high blood pressure. They include age; when you get to a certain age you are predisposed to having high blood pressure. Genetics; If you come from a family where they have hypertension, there is also a possibility that you might have hypertension at a certain age. Being overweight and obese means you are at risk of having hypertension. Also not being physically active. Sitting on your desk for hours without any physical activity can also lead to high blood pressure. Also high salt intake. And the thing about salt diet is that there is salt in spices apart from the normal salt that we take. Even our seasoning cubes have a lot of salt in them. Also smoking tobacco, that is cigarettes, increases the risk of high blood pressure.”

What symptoms should people look out for when dealing with hypertension?

“Most people actually refer to hypertension as a silent killer because it has no symptoms. Someone might have high blood pressure and they might not feel anything.

“They will not feel tired, stressed. When you have malaria, you will have the fever, headache, bitter tongue but with high blood pressure one might just be a walking corpse and they might just fall down and die.

“Everybody will later find out that it was high blood pressure or a stroke that killed them. You can only know you are hypertensive when you have checked your blood pressure and the reading is 140/90 millimetre mercury. Hypertension is measures in two numbers.

“The systolic reading represents the pressure in the blood vessel when the heart contracts or beats while the diastolic represents the pressure in the blood vessels when the hearts rest between beats. Now if someone goes to check their blood pressure on the first day and the reading is above 140 for the systolic and 90 for the diastolic and they check the second day and the reading is the same thing, it means that the person is hypertensive.

“However, there are cases where people experience symptoms of hypertension and that is when the person blood pressure is really high. We are talking of 180/120. Now in such cases people would experience headache, chest pain, dizziness, difficulty breathing, nausea, vomitting, blurred vision, confusion, abnormal heart rhythm, buzzing in the ears, nose bleeds and others. When it gets to such a condition that means the blood pressure is very high.”

What happens if hypertension is not treated?

“If hypertension is not treated it can result in health complication like kidney disease, heart disease, heart failure and stroke which is also known as cardiovascular accident.”

What can youngsters do to prevent high blood pressure in the future?

“Lifestyle changes are important. They can eat more vegetables and fruits, also sit down less. There are some offices where it is mandatory to do exercise. You resume work and the first thing you do is a 5 minuites or 10 minuites workout.

“When you sit on your desk for a long time, you can stand up, pace or do sone exercise. Getting at least 150 minute aerobic activity will help. Usually, when you tell people to get aerobic activities, it seems vague and expensive and they wonder if they are to register in a gym, buy gym wares, what exercises do I need to do?. How do I know this exercise is helping my heart? Now something as simple as brisk walking for 30 minuites, five days in a week would reduce the risk of hypertension. Or it could be strength exercise, 2 or more days a week. You go the gym lift weight that helps you heart pumping. For people that are overweight or obese losing weight would prevent high blood pressure.

“Also take drugs as prescribed by a health care professional. There are cases where you see a doctor and he tells you that you are not hypertensive but pre-hypertensive and medications might be prescribed. Taking these medications would prevent it from going into full blown hypertension. Also reduce salt intake as much as possible, in Nigeria we barely measure the amount of salt we use. But in cases where we can measure using 2 grams of salt per day would help.

“Eating food that is low in saturated or trans fat would also help. Eating beef, like Shaki, tonzo that increases the risk of high blood pressure. Also using the same groundnut oil that you have used to fry plantain, meat to cook another meal is unsafe. Same groundnut oil is bring recycled which causes trans fat and that increases the risk of high blood pressure.

“In addition to that, for men 2 bottle of drinks daily and women 1 bottle of drink is enough alcohol consumption.

“Also stopping the intake of tobacco. Not mixing or sharing medication. There are cases where people are on medication and they find out their friend, neighbour or sister is hypertensive and they give them their medication to take. Hypertension is not like malaria. You do not share medication. If your physician says take your medication for one month, you have to take it consistently for one month. You do not stop your medication except your health care professional ask you to do so after series of assessment.”

What can you do to manage your health when you have being diagnosed with high blood pressure?

“I spoke about risk factors earlier, there are modifiable risk factors and there are risk factors that cannot be modified.

“For example high salt intake is something that you can always reduce, work on your weight, reduce fatty foods. Most nutritionists would ask you to cut down on your consumption of vegetable oil and fried food.

“There are risk factors that cannot be modified like your family history. If your grand father had hypertension you cannot change that. You are from the same lineage, you might come down with hypertension.

“If you are over 65 years of age you might come down with hypertension.

“If you have co-existing diseases like being diabetic or you have a kidney disease there is a high risk that you might have hypertension.

“As an adult, you should check your blood pressure at least once a week. Some people have the blood pressure monitors in their house and employ the guidance of a health care professional to check and and analyse the readings for them.”

What can you say about the deaths that occured during the AFCON match

“If these people have being checking their blood pressure before now then it would have been under control. If your blood pressure is well controlled you can’t come down with a stroke or a heart attack or a heart failure. Watching the AFCON Match did not kill these people. What happened was that they had probably gone into a cardiovascular accident and that caused their deaths. If your blood pressure is well managed and you don’t have other health conditions watching a match would not send you to a premature death.

“Generally there are complications that arise when blood pressure is not well managed and it is one of this complications that would have resulted from when these people were triggered by the stress of watching a football match.

“It could be an angina, which is a chest pain or it could be a heart attack.

“Heart attack happens when the blood supply to the heart is blocked, and the heart muscle die from the lack of oxygen. The longer the blood flow is blocked, the greater the damage to the heart.

“It can also be a heart failure, this is when the heart cannot pump enough blood and oxygen to all the vital blood organs.

“It can also be irregular heartbeat which can lead to sudden death.

“Currently, the WHO African region has the highest prevalence of hypertension, that is 27 percent.

“While the WHO American region has the lowest prevalence of hypertension which is 18 percent.

“So what I want everyone to take out from this is that there are certain medications for high blood pressure.

“If you have being diagnosed with high blood pressure you do not stop your medication unless your physician ask you to stop.

“Also you do not share medication with people. Your medication is specifically for you because there are different classes of high blood pressure medicine and they do different things.

“They treat high blood pressure in different ways. Therefore it is not advisable to switch your medication without your physician’s permission.

“Nobody would die from a heart failure or stroke, if there have not bring previously hypertensive.

“The issue is you do not know you are hypertensive unless you have gone to check your blood pressure in the past. And if you check your blood pressure last month you should also keep checking. As an adult you should check your blood pressure at least once a week. That would help to monitor and see how healthy your heart is.”

Key Points

Reduce alcohol intake and smoking.

Work on your weight if you are obese.

Reduce intake of salt, 2 grams of salt is sufficient per day.

Exercise, try as much as possible not to get stuck in just a position. 150 minutes of exercise per week will keep you in the safe zone.

Take your medications as per your doctor prescription and do not share with others.

Check your blood pressure at least once a week.

Avoid trans fat. Do not reuse groundnut oil that has already being used in frying plantain, meat etc.